J 54 



HA RD WICKE'S SCIENCE- G OSSIP. 



femora as well as on the tarsi, some of the joints of 

 the latter are quite yellow underneath. 



The female closely resembles the male, except in 

 the shape of the abdomen, which is fusiform and 

 pointed at its extremity- Remarks : This species 

 corresponds very closely with the description given 

 by Schiner of his Cordylura lurida, but differs from it 

 by having the legs almost entirely black instead of 

 being principally yellow ; both species are rather 

 aberrant, and seem to form links between Cordylura 

 and Scatophaga, for they resemble most of the species 

 in the latter genus by having the horny proboscis and 

 striped brown thorax. The entire outline of one of 

 the lobes of the proboscis is given in the illustration, 

 no further dissection being necessary to display the 

 dental organs beyond removing the tip of the 

 proboscis and carefully expanding the lobes. The 

 teeth occupy a large portion of the lobes and are of a 

 deep amber tint. The teeth are operated by a 

 powerful fulcrum, the ends of which are prolonged, 

 and towards their extremities are reversed, termi- 

 nating in a sharp cutting edge, and form additional 

 organs of dentition ; the free ends of three of the 

 teeth are of the blow-fly type. The central tooth is 

 similar to the large one in Scatophaga stercoraria, 

 while the main tooth is not represented in any other 

 species yet met with. 



Their action must be that of crushing and cutting, 

 by being brought together, as in the case of the 

 dung-fly, there being no other organ, as possessed 

 by Cai'icca tigrina, to assist in the process of 

 mastication. 



There is an entire absence of pseudo-trachea;. This 

 peculiarity has been met with previously in one genus 

 only, viz. Stomoxys, but their place is supplied in 

 C. oceanum by delicate chitinous plates arranged in 

 distinct rows. These have a very strong resemblance 

 to miniature ears of wheat, their office, doubtless, is 

 to assist in the capture of prey, to continue the 

 process of mastication, and to collect and convey to 

 the main trunk the juices so extracted, where they 

 come under control of another organ whose special 

 duty it is to convey them to the oesophagus and 

 supply the cravings of the creature's appetite. 



GOSSIP ON CURRENT TOPICS. 

 By W. Mattieu Williams, F.R.A.S-, F.C.S. 



A DESTROYER OF TASTE.— In "Nature" 

 of April 14th, is a communication from Mr. 

 W. T. Thiselton Dyer, on a curious property of the 

 leaves of the Gymnema sylvestre, an asclepiadaceous 

 plant which grows on the Deccan peninsula, in Assam, 

 on the Coromandel coast, and in some parts of the 

 continent of Africa. If two or three leaves are 

 carefully chewed, the power of tasting sugar is 

 absolutely abolished. General Ellis found that it 



also abolished the power of enjoying a cigar. A 

 paper was read on the subject at a meeting of the 

 Nilgiri Natural History Society, by Mr. David 

 Hooper, on March 7th. Mr. Edgeworth, who first 

 noticed this property, states that after masticating the 

 leaf, powdered sugar placed in the mouth tasted like 

 sand. A sweet orange has the taste of a sour lime, 

 the sourness - of the citric acid being alone distin- 

 guishable ; only sweet and bitter flavours are thus 

 destroyed. This indicates that the action is not due 

 to a complete temporary paralysis of the nerves of 

 taste. After a good dose of the leaf sulphate of 

 quinine tastes like chalk. The effect usually lasts 

 two or three hours. According to Mr. Hooper, this 

 property of the leaves is due to an acid which he has 

 separated. He proposed to name it Gymnaic acid. 



Changes of Level on the Baltic. — The topo- 

 graphical surveys recently carried out in Finland 

 show that the shores of the Baltic are, relatively to 

 the level of the sea, continually rising. Since the 

 surveys of 1810 to 1815 several islands have become 

 peninsulas, and shallows have become islands or 

 beaches. On the south-west coast and in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the Aland Archipelego, many places that 

 a few years ago were under water are now grazing 

 grounds, market gardens, or corn fields. Maps are 

 now being made which will define and measure the 

 future progress of such changes. 



Jubilee Cookery. — Some flippant " paragraphs 

 have been lately published in the newspapers con- 

 cerning those jubilee celebrations which include the 

 old practice of roasting an ox whole. The paragraphs 

 describe the result as "burnt fat and underdone 

 steaks," and speak of "this wasteful mode of 

 cooking good beef," &c. &c. If the writers had 

 condescended to study so vulgar a subject as the 

 philosophy of roasting, they would have discovered 

 that when an ox is roasted whole in the old-fashioned 

 manner there is far less waste, far less of burnt fat, 

 than when it is roasted in separated joints ; that the 

 least wasteful method of roasting a given quantity 

 of beef or other flesh meat is to roast it in one piece. 

 I have expounded rather fully the reasons of this in 

 chapter v. of " The Chemistry of Cookery," and will 

 briefly recapitulate them here. 



Roasting, however performed, is a wasteful method 

 of cookery, the reason being that a certain amount of 

 the surface of the meat to be cooked is exposed to a 

 drying heat, and this drying heat is wasteful in pro- 

 portion to the amount of surface exposed. Now it is 

 obvious to everybody that every time you subdivide 

 an ox, or anything else, you expose two new surfaces. 

 If you divide each half into quarters you expose six 

 new surfaces, if these into eighths, you expose fourteen 

 new surfaces, if these again into sixteenths, you ex- 

 pose thirty new surfaces, and so on ; if the ox is cut 

 up into ordinary small family joints, about a hundred 



